As a first-generation student from a small town, Gohar Khan ’21 had to navigate the college admissions process largely on his own. He founded his YouTube channel, Gohar’s Guide, to make things easier for other young people.

Today, more than 10 million people follow Khan on social media for college application advice, study tips, and life hacks. He is also the CEO and cofounder of Next Admit, a consulting business that provides help with college essays, applications, and test preparation. “I’m on a mission to help students worldwide succeed inside and outside of school,” he says.

Born in Pakistan, Khan moved to the United States when he was six months old and grew up in Connecticut, attending a public high school that rarely sent students to top colleges. “That, coupled with the fact that my parents hadn’t gone through the process themselves, made [applying to colleges] a little bit difficult,” he says. “I wanted to demystify the admissions process for a lot of people in the position I was once in.”

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Even as a teenager, Laurie Stach ’06 says, she had a “crazy ambition to take on the world and solve problems.” At MIT, she realized she wasn’t the only one.

“Adults always see these youth who are good at math and science and say, ‘You’re going to do great things—someday,’” says Stach. “Meanwhile, traditional education isn’t preparing them.”

That’s why in 2012 Stach founded LaunchX, a for-profit entrepreneurship program that helps high school students build practical skills through an intensive summer program in which they start real companies. Stach says that students form teams, identify a problem, and build an actual product or service that they then take to market—often generating preorders or even revenue before the four-week program ends.

Raised in Texas and the Carolinas, Stach majored in mechanical engineering at MIT and earned her MBA from Harvard Business School in 2011. She ran her first summer program on MIT’s campus with 30 students in 2013 and says “it kind of snowballed.” LaunchX now serves about 500 students per year across both in-person and online programs.

Read more at www.technologyreview.com/alumni-profiles.